Treating your website as an asset

Are you and others in your marketing department frustrated by the lack of available funds for your website? If so you may want to change the conversation during your website’s budgeting process. Ask those involved in reviewing your website’s budget to step back for a moment and think about the following:

Should your website be treated as an asset or an expense?

• Your company owns building(s) that sit on property you own…your website sits on a domain that you own.
• Your building requires utilities, upkeep and the occasional remodel-you might even need to build a new building…your website requires hosting fees, upkeep to content and the occasional remodel, new design or even a new site.
• Buildings are sold as an asset, often for a profit…websites are generally sold and often for a profit.
• You spend considerable dollars on getting people to your store and having a great environment for them while they are there…you spend a lot of dollars on driving people to your website and their experience while there.

I could go on and on with direct comparisons but let’s take this conversation to the next level. Today’s consumer is an educated consumer. They are more likely to visit your on-line store and conduct some research versus calling a sales person or visiting your location. Why would you spend so much on your building, lobby and fixtures to appeal to customers when many more will be turned off by your out of date website and never make it to your physical building?

To illustrate this point think about a college recruiting students. Let’s say college ABC has a strong architectural program, a division leading soccer program and has just finished an exhausting 5 year capital campaign to build a new student gym that would rival a downtown private health club. There is quite a bit of content about the new health club on the development (alumni – fundraising) section of the website and only a small news release about the opening on the main site. The soccer team’s page is fully updated. The faculty are swamped with all they do and update their pages every few years.

As a prospective student I visit college ABC’s website (main section – not the alumni section) along with three others. I pick college XYZ because their site tells of an awesome architecture program, internships with award winning graduates and their state of the art work out facility. I ponder working out in the facility while playing for their equally good soccer team…get the point? College ABC had all of the same elements but they did a poor job in telling their story on-line.

You need to turn the thinking around:

1. You budget, build a building, place it on your balance sheet and depreciate the asset…budget, build a website, place it on your balance sheet and depreciate the asset.
2. Now that you have your new building you budget for utilities, upkeep and pay your taxes…you pay for hosting, an internet connection, content refresh and pay for your security certificates and domain renewals.
3. You spend marketing dollars dressing up your building and driving people to the location…you spend marketing dollars dressing up and driving people to your website.
4. You budget in 5 year cycles for big ticket items, like roof, a/c, repairs, new editions etc… you budget in 5 year cycles for major overhauls, remodels of the website or leveraging new technology like the social media and the like.

The bottom line is that your website will have more “foot traffic” than your physical building(s) will ever have. Shouldn’t your website have equal treatment during the budget process?

Wishing you success in marketing,

Gilbert Bailey

 

 

Gilbert Bailey is with Beanstalk Data, a really cool marketing automation company, based in Charlotte, NC.  He can be reached at 800-892-3997 or gilbert@beanstalkdata.com - http://www.beanstalkdata.com

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